Kenya’s central bank unexpectedly raised its benchmark interest rate for the second time since Governor Kamau Thugge took office in June, citing the need to support the country’s battered shilling, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary policy committee increased the rate by 200 basis points to 12.5%, the largest increase since 2011. The news was announced by Thugge in an emailed statement Tuesday from the capital, Nairobi. Only one of the seven economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast an increase.
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Resources Per Country
- Angola
- Benin
- Botswana
- Burkina Faso
- Cameroon
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Congo
- Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
- Cote d'Ivoire
- Djibouti
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Kenya
- Liberia
- Madagascar
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
- Senegal
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Africa
- Sudan
- Swaziland
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Ethiopia's agreement with its bilateral creditors, other than China, to suspend debt payments until 2025 could be voided if the country does not secure an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan by March 31, 2024, the Paris Club of developed creditor nations said, Reuters reported. The debt service standstill for 2023 and 2024, which the central bank governor says will save the country $1.5 billion, applies to loans agreed before Nov. 10.
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Late Bosasa chief executive Gavin Watson’s nephew has reported the master’s office in Johannesburg to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) over unlawful approval of Bosasa liquidation, the Sunday Tribune South Africa reported. Jared Watson said that this was because the office wanted to sell the assets cheaply.
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The German government pledged Monday to invest 4 billion euros ($4.37 billion) in African green energy projects until 2030, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying that countries in Africa should benefit more from their wealth of raw materials, the Associated Press reported. Scholz discussed the pledge at a news conference on the G20 Compact with Africa summit taking place in Berlin. He did not mention any specific projects but said the materials used in green energy should be processed in the African nations they come from. “This creates jobs and prosperity in these countries,” Scholz said.
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Zambia’s dollar debt plunged after official creditors co-led by China and France rejected a revised bondholder restructuring proposal, stalling the revamp of $3 billion of outstanding notes, Bloomberg News reported. The development, which calls into question a Group of 20 plan to help poor countries overhaul unsustainable loans, comes after Zambia last month reached a memorandum of understanding with official creditors to restructure $6.3 billion of debt. It needed to receive at least as favorable treatment from private creditors under the G20’s Common Framework guidelines.
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Zambia's official creditors including China rejected a deal the country struck with its international bondholders because they believed its "base case" scenario did not deliver debt relief comparable to what they offered in a separate deal, two sources familiar with the talks said, Reuters reported. Official creditors said the agreement in principle, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also rejected, did not comply with "Comparability of Treatment", said the sources, who declined to be identified as the discussions are private.
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Nigerian President Bola Tinubu met top officials of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) to negotiate a "multi-billion dollar infrastructure finance facility" to help build ports and power plants, his spokesperson said on Tuesday. Tinubu held talks with IsDB vice president Mansur Muhtar late on Monday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, spokesperson Ajuri Ngelale said in a statement. He didn't provide further details of the finance package sought by the Nigerian government.
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Globally, there are currently more than 35,000 coworking spaces, and this figure is projected to increase to 41,000 by the close of 2024, reflecting a growth rate of approximately 21%. Notably, in South Africa, this growth rate has more than doubled, soaring to an impressive 44%, Biz Community reported. This demonstrates the robust demand for serviced and flexible workspaces that support evolving trends in hybrid and remote work, affirming their enduring presence in our daily lives.
U.S. businesses want certainty over the future of Washington's flagship trade program for Africa as they reduce their dependence on China and consider investing on the continent, a Biden administration official said on Saturday, Reuters reported. In the wake of the global pandemic and the supply chain headaches it provoked, companies across a range of industries are moving operations out of manufacturing powerhouse China in an effort to de-risk their businesses and foster resilience.
The South African Reserve Bank urged the government to address structural impediments such as record power cuts and poor infrastructure that are undermining its work by constraining supply, restraining economic growth and rapidly pushing up prices, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank is “meant to respond to short term cyclical issues — but if the structural issues don’t change, what happens in this economy is that it behaves all the time like it is over-heating,” Deputy Governor Fundi Tshazibana said in an interview on Saturday.
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